What's Project Management Got to Do With It?

By Brenda Christie

There are lots of people who (i) don't understand what project management is or (2) think it's over rated  or (3) think it's not necessary.  Their response to project management, "Why Bother?"

Project management gives you the ability to engage,  plan and execute.  It gives you the ability to establish an environment in which to control the outcome.  This is very different from what happens during a fire drill or flying by the seat of your pants.  

Engage

By 'Engage' it is meant to identify all the stakeholders (individuals or groups) who could be affected by the project you've embarked on to complete.  Why be concerned about stakeholders?  Well think of it this way --  You buy a nice blue balloon, huff and puff to blow it up, and then out of nowhere, someone sticks a dart in it before you even get a chance to admire it.  Which is not to say that this is what stakeholders who are left out do, but there's always that possibility.

Other reasons to engage stakeholders include the fact that they are often the ones financing the project.  Putting that aside, they often have insight from a business perspective of different aspects of what the product or service should do.

Last but not least, you'll probably need their sign off to go live.  If you still need convincing, see "Who Are These Stakeholders Anyway?" for more details.

Plan

Think of this as planning for success.  Which isn't to say that you won't succeed without planning.  Project planning just increases the likelihood that you will succeed and minimizes the bumps and cost along the way so that someone will feel comfortable giving you another project to lead.

So what happens during the planning stage?  Some of the project activities included in the planning stage include creating a communication plan.  Answering questions about how do I let the stakeholders know where we are in the project?  Should I have a weekly meeting?  Will they all come?  Do they all need to attend?  Other questions answered during the project scheduling stage include what resources do I need?  What skills do they need to have?  Which of course goes along with what tasks have to be completed and which resources should be assigned to which task?

An interesting and handy skill for the project manager to have is facilitation.  This can be especially helpful, if not crucial, in a matrix environment where you don't have direct control over resources.  I'll talk more about the different organizational structures in a separate issue.  Just thought I'd mention it now, because just because you need a resource doesn't always mean it will be available, or you'll get it.  Something to keep in mind for when that OMG! moment comes along.

Which leads to another very important activity that happens during project planning.  Risk Management.  Risk Management entails planning for things you haven't planned for and having a fallback if and when it happens.  In a production environment this would be equivalent to having a contingency or disaster/recovery plan.  It is also often referred to as BAU, Business As Usual. If you don't already have a plan when a catastrophe happens, it is probably too late, and you may miss your delivery date, or worse, be out of a job.  Types of risk can include changes in laws that affect your project, changes in company policies that adversely affect your project, availability of products required by your project, etc.  Changes to the actual project plan, as in a stakeholder expands the scope of what the project should do, also come under risk.  How these changes will be handled gets addressed during scope or change management.

Risk can also be positive, in which case, you should have a plan of action for that too, in order to take advantage of it.

Execution

Execution is getting it done.  Yes, the idea behind a project is that it have a start and end date.  Projects do not live for ever by nature.  And when you're finally done, the key question which will need to be answered is, does it do what we agreed it would do.  Important fact:  You should not wait until it's all done, to find out whether it does what it was agreed would do.  Rather, what it does would have been outlined during creation of the charter and scope.  Whether it works would have been measured throughout the lifetime of the project.  Metrics for measuring the usability and quality of the service and or product, would have been established during the planning stage.  Actual usability (as in have we hit the mark) would be determined through continuous quality assurance throughout the life of the project.  These two activities generally come under what is known in project management parlance as Monitor and Control.

Conclusion

So in a nutshell, here are some of the reasons that Project Management is important.  It matters.  Project Management is used to ensure people get their money's worth.  Give them what they want, at the agreed upon price at the agreed upon time.

Best,

Brenda Christie